All My Good Countrymen by Vojtěch Jasný Has Been Digitally Re-mastered

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All My Good Countrymen by Vojtěch Jasný Has Been Digitally Re-mastered

A priceless gem of Czech cinematography filmed in the picturesque village of Bystré located in the Pardubice Region can once again be seen in the cinema. Jasný's "All My Good Countrymen", a film banned by censors in the past, describes post-war life in a village, which is split ideologically as a result of the Communist Coup in February 1948. The film provides a portrait of Kelč, the director's native village, although the film was actually shot in in Bystré, where Jasný resides when staying in the Czech Republic. The "Countrymen" received a number of awards including the Best Director Prize at the 1969 Cannes Film Festival.

A digitally re-mastered copy, which took an almost unbelievable three thousand hours of diligent work to clean up, was first shown at the Karlovy Vary International Festival on June 29, and then on August 1 at the Summer Film School in Uherské Hradiště. The re-mastered film was distributed within the Project 100 touring film exhibition.

And what does digital "re-mastering" entail? At first the film is scanned "frame by frame". "All My Good Countrymen" has 170 thousand of these. The scanning itself is performed three times and is followed up by the first phase of semi-automatic cleaning and then manual cleaning. The whole process involves the work of cameramen, colourists, restorers, re-touchers and other specialists. The re-mastering was overseen by none other than Vojtěch Jasný.